Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn

III

EDITED BY ELIZABETH BISLAND

THE influence of circumstance and environment in moulding human impulse and achievement has been so many times convincingly maintained, both before and since Taine applied the theory to literature, that every new proof to the contrary is of interest.

Maimed in his vision while still a lad, almost to the point of total blindness, Hearn struggled the rest of his life with myopia, and walked always in terror of immanent darkness. Yet the general sense left upon the mind by his whole body of work is of color. The brain behind those eyes so near to incompetence was a seeing mind, and through an inefficient medium perceived, as few men have done, every iridescence of his world. Not a shimmer or a glory escaped him. From his books might be gathered a delightful anthology of the beauty of tint, of form, of shadow, of line. No loveliness was too subtle, too evanescent, too minute, to be recognized by those dim and straining eyes.

And in these letters, again and again, some fairness, so fine as to go unperceived by the stronger-visioned, is commented upon with strong pleasure. His perception of the delicate groove in the Japanese eyelid, mentioned in the second letter of this third series, is one of those feats of observation which so often startled his better-sighted, but duller-visioned friends. Again, note his “living statues of gold, with blue hair, like the Carib half-breeds.”

One with the patient curiosity to follow up these revelations of a sort of “ second-sight,” of delicate intensity, throughout his writings, might find almost sufficient testimony to prove that only through his myopic eyes could one learn wholly to see the complete beauty of the world.

[ReceivedMarch 2, 1894.]
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN : —
I am absolutely unproductive now, hovering between one thing and another,— sometimes angry with men, — sometimes with the Gods. But I think of many things. I have been long writing down extraordinary passages from the compositions of students. Some are simply queer, — some interest because showinga thought that is not as our thought, — some are beautiful, as in the old Chinese utterance about the firmament : —

“ What thought is so high as it is, — what mind is so wide? ”

What most pleases me are subjects taken from the memories and thoughts of the boys themselves. I have some beauties that I know to be original; and I have often thought of an essay about them. But of a few I am in doubt.

Can this be original? —

Subject: “ What men remember longest.”

“ When I was only four years old, my dear, dear mother died. It was a winter’s day. The wind was blowing through the bushes and trees round our house. There were no leaves on the trees. Quails in the distance whistled with a melancholy sound. I remember that as my mother was lying in bed, a little before she died, I gave her a sweet orange. She smiled and took it and ate it. It was the last time she smiled. From that moment when she ceased to breathe until to-day, sixteen years have elapsed. But to me the time is as a moment. The winds that blew when my mother died, blow still; — the quails utter the same cries — all things are as then. But my mother never will come back again.”

KUMAMOTO, March 6, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
Well, I read Loti all through in bed last night — and dropped asleep at last to dream of the Venise fantasque et tremblotante.

Before talking of the book especially I want to utter my heterodoxies and monstrosities in your ear. You will not be pleased, I fear; but truth is truth, however far it be from accepted standards.

To me the Japanese eye has a beauty which I think Western eyes have not. I have read nasty things written about Japanese eyes until I am tired of reading them. Now let me defend my seemingly monstrous proposition.

Miss Bird has well said that when one remains long in Japan, one finds one’s standard of Beauty changing; and the fact is true of other countries than Japan. Any real traveller can give similar experiences. When I show beautiful European engravings of young girls or children to Japanese, what do they say? I have done it fifty times, and whenever I was able to get a criticism, it was always the same: “ The faces are nice, — all but the eyes; the eyes are too big, — the eyes are monstrous.” We judge by our conventions. The Orient j udges by its own. Who is right ?

There are eyes and eyes, in all countries — ugly and beautiful. To make comparisons of beauty we must take the most beautiful types of the West and East. If we do this, I think we find the Orient is right. The most beautiful pair of eyes I ever saw — a pair that fascinated me a great deal too much, and caused me to do some foolish things in old bachelor days — were Japanese. They were not small, but very characteristically racial; — the lashes were very long, and the opening also of the lids; — and the feeling they gave one was that of the eyes of a great wonderful bird of prey. — There are wonderful eyes in Japan for those who can see.

The eyelid is so very peculiar that I think its form decides — more than any other characteristic of the far Eastern races — the existence of two entirely distinct original varieties of mankind. The muscular attachments are quite different, and the lines of the lashes, — indeed the whole outer anatomy.

One might ask mockingly whether to Japanese eyelids could be applied the Greek term charitoblepharos. I think it could. There is a beauty of the Japanese eyelid, quite rare, but very singular — in which the lid-edge seems double, or at least marvellously grooved — and the effect is a softness and shadowiness difficult to describe.

However, it seems to me that the chief beauty of a beautiful Japanese eye is in the peculiar anatomical arrangement which characterizes it. The ball of the eye is not shown, — the setting is totally hidden. The brown smooth skin opens quite suddenly and strangely over a moving jewel. Now in the most beautiful Western eyes the set of the ball into the skull is visible, — the whole orbed form, and the whole line of the bone-socket, — except in special cases. The mechanism is visible. I think that, from a perfectly artistic point of view, the veiling of the mechanism is a greater feat on Nature’s part. (I have seen a most beautiful pair of Chinese eyes, — that I will never forget.)

I don’t mean to make any sweeping general rule. I only mean this: “ Compare the most beautiful Japanese or Chinese eye with the most beautiful European eye, and see which suffers by comparison.” I believe the true artist would say “ neither.” But that which least shows the machinery behind it — the osteological and nervous machinery — now appears to me to have the greater charm. I dare say such eyes as I speak of are not common; but beautiful eyes are common in no country that I have ever visited.

And now I will presume to express my opinion about another heresy, — that a white skin is the most beautiful. I think it is the least beautiful. The Greeks never made a white statue; they were always painted.

Naturally each race thinks itself the most beautiful. But we must not think about race in such matters at all, — only about color per se, and its effect upon the aesthetic color-sense in us, derived — as we all know through Mr. Grant Allen’s popularization of a most complex subject — from ancestral experience in food-choice. The sensation of a beautiful sunset and that of a ripe apple is not so different in origin as might be supposed.

But to appreciate the beauty of colored skins, it is not simply enough to travel, — one must become familiar with the sight of them through months and years. (So strong our prejudices are!) And at last when you perceive there are human skins of real gold — (living statues of gold, with blue hair, like the Carib half-breeds!) —and all fruit-tints of skins,—orange, and yellow, and peach-red, and lustrous browns of countless shades; — and all colors of metal, too, — bronzes of every tone, — one begins to doubt whether a white skin is so fine! (If you don’t believe these colors, j ust refer to Broca’s pattern-books, where you will find that all jewel-colors exist in eyes, and all fruit-colors and metal-colors in skins. I could not believe my own eyes, till I saw Broca.) I have seen people who had grass-green emeralds instead of eyes, and topazes and rubies for eyes. And I have seen races with blue hair.

I do not think the Japanese skin remarkably beautiful; the “ amber ” of Arnold’s imagination does not exist in this archipelago, — one must go to the tropics for that. The Italian or Spanish brown seems to me much richer and finer. But I am only talking in general. (It seems to me a sort of egg-color. Well, Mahomet says that is the color of the houris, — but it is nothing to other colors that exist.)

— Now for jet-black, — the smooth velvety black skin that remains cold as a lizard under the tropical sun.

It seems to me extremely beautiful! If it is beautiful in art, why should it not be beautiful in nature? As a matter of fact, it is, and has been so acknowledged, even by the most prejudiced slave-owning races.

Either Stanley, or Livingstone, perhaps, told the world that after long living in Africa, the sight of white faces produced something like fear. (And the Evil Spirits of Africa are white.) Well, even after a few months alone with black faces, I have felt that feeling of uncomfortableness at the sight of white faces. Something ghostly, terrible, seemed to have come into those faces that I had never imagined possible before. I felt for a moment the black man’s terror of the white. At least I think I partly realized what it was.

You remember the Romans lost their first battles with the North through sheer fear. Oculi cœrulii et truces, — rutilœ comœ, — magna corpora! — The fairer, — the weirder, — the more spectral, — the more terrible. Beauty there is in the North, of its kind. But it is surely not comparable with the wonderful beauty of color in other races.

Faithfully,

LAFCADIO.

KUMAMOTO,March 19, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
. . . There is a good deal of thinking —curious thinking—among these menstudents. I find the fact of existence is a trouble to not a few. “ Why am I in the world. — Please tell me your views.” These are the awful questions I am sometimes asked. I cannot forbear to cite a specimen-composition. It is queer, — is n’t it?

“For what purpose do men live in this world? From the time a man is born he drinks, eats, speaks, sees, hears, feels happy or sad, sleeps at night, rises in the morning. He is educated, he grows up, he marries, he has sons, he becomes old, his hair turns white, and he dies.

“ What does he do all his life? His. whole occupation in this world is only to eat and to drink, to sleep and to rise up. Why came he into this world? Was it to eat and drink? Was it to sleep? Every day he does the same thing; — yet he is not tired!

“ When rewarded he is glad. When pained he is sad. When he gets rich, he is happy; when he becomes poor, he is very unhappy. Why is he sad or glad about his condition? Happiness and sadness are only temporary. Why does he study hard? No matter how great a scholar he may become, when he is dead, there remains nothing of him — only bones! ”

And observe that the author of the above is full of humor, life, and noisy fun. He it was who personated the Minister of France at the late banquet-act.

The composition brought a memory to me. A great crime which terrifies us by the revelation of the beast that hides far down, Minotaur-wise, in the unknown deeps of the human heart, sometimes makes one think like the above composition. All mysteries of pain and sorrow stir up afresh the awful three— Why? Whence? Whither?

Well, there had been a frightful crime committed. I slept and forgot the world and all things in the dead heavy sleep which men sleep in the tropics.

Midnight within forty hours of the Equator; and there was music that made people get out of their beds and cry.

The music was a serenade; — there were flutes and mandolins.

The flutes had dove-tones; and they purled and cooed and sobbed, — and cooed and sobbed and purled again; — and the mandolins, through the sweetness of the plaint, throbbed, like a beating of hearts.

The palms held their leaves still to listen. The warm wind, the warm sea, slept. Nothing moved but the stars and the fireflies.

And the melody said, more plainly than any speech articulate could ever say, —

“ Do you not feel the Night in your heart, — the great sob of the joy of it?

“ And this strange fragrance that recalls the past, — the love of all the dead who will never love again, — being only dust, — feeding the roots of the palms? ”

And I asked, “ Why that wonderful, inexpressible, torturing sweetness of music? ”

And they said: “ The murderer of the girl has been acquitted. They are consoling his family! ”
Faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, KYUSHU, April 7, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN : —
Just back from Shikoku to find your kind letter. I thought of writing you on my journey, but as we rushed from Kumamoto to Kompira-uchi-machi and back in four days, I really could not get a chance to write a decent letter. This is partly about the Adventures of Kaji.

Before he was born, I remember expressing the fear in a letter to you that no child of mine could ever have the wonderful placidity of the little Japanese boy, Kame, whom I compared to a small Buddha. But, although in quite a different way, my boy turns out to be altogether Japanese in this excellent point. He never cries, which you will grant is quite extraordinary, — and is never sick, and likes travel. His adventures gave me proof (such as I could never otherwise have obtained) how much the Japanese love children, and how much deeper and more natural is the common interest of the people in children. Perhaps this may be partly, though not altogether explained, by the custom of early marriages, and the Oriental family structure. With us the long delay of marriages, and the disintegration of the family, and the difficulty of life, have all combined, doubtless, to create that absence of sentiment which renders it difficult for us to be interested at sight in children not our own; and which, by reaction perhaps, helps to make Western children so much naughtier and more troublesome than Oriental children.

On the train from Kumamoto to Moji we travelled with a crowd of furious politicians, — some of whom had evidently been banqueting. They shouted as they talked, and laughed enormously, and made a great ado. This interested Kaji. He looked at them very curiously, and laughed at them; and they stopped talking politics awhile to amuse themselves by watching him. So far as I could judge, Kaji began his travels by introducing peace into the world of politics.

At Moji he was carried all over the hotel, and made much of. We took a steamer the same night, — an abominable steamer (don’t forget the name!) the Yodogawa Maru. No first-class cabin, — but a large chu-to; all together on the floor. There were perhaps twenty others with us, including a number of sweet women. At least I thought them very sweet, — partly because they were young, pretty, and gentle, — but much more because they begged for a loan of Kaji. He played with them all, and was petted very much. But he showed much more partiality for the men — (I pray the Gods he may always have this disposition; it would save him a universe of trouble); and the men carried him all over the ship, and the Captain descended from his bridge to play with him. Then one old man produced the portrait of his granddaughter, a little girl who he said looked much like Kaji; and the resemblance was really striking. Another passenger gave Kaji a small book to read as soon as he should be able; and little baskets of oranges, boxes of suchi and cakes were given us by various persons. Thus, as the “ grub ” furnished by the steamer was really uneatable, Kaji supplied us with provisions.

Kaji’s grandmother, who carried him on her back over most of the distance, insisted upon certain observances. There was a wonderful display of phosphorescence that night; the ripples were literally created with fire, — a fire quite as bright as candlelight, — and at the bows of the steamer there was a pyrotechnic blazing and sputtering bright enough to read small print by. Kaji liked the sight, but was not allowed to look long at it; there is some ghostly idea connected with these sealights which I could not fully learn. (You know the French phrase, la mer lampe.) Well, the sea really did “ lamp” that night; I never saw a brighter phosphorescence in the tropics. Even to throw a cigar-butt into the water, made a flashing like a fire-cracker. A tug (Ko-joki) passed us, surrounded by what seemed like a vast playing of Catharine-wheels. And Kaji also is not yet suffered to look much into a looking-glass, — for another ghostly reason which I shall some day tell you about.

At Tadotsu, the crew and passengers all said good-bye to Kaji. The women said, “ We shall be lonesome now.” Kaji laughed at them till their faces passed out of sight.

The hotel at Tadotsu called the Hanabishi is very, very pretty, — and rather old. The oshiire were wonderful; — the jibukuro were marvellous; the whole place would have delighted Morse unspeakably. And nowhere else in all Japan did I ever eat such fried fish! — just out of the sea. You know Tadotsu, so I need not describe it. Except for the modern structures, the town is delightful. Settsu said, “ I saw this place before in a dream.” — I said, “That is because your ancestors visited it so often.” Kaji was pleased by the shops, and we bought absurd little toys for him.

But the Kompira-uchi-machi was a greater surprise than Tadotsu. What a delicious town, — what survivals! It was just the day to see such things — a vast warm bath of blue light, cherries and peaches in bloom, long vistas through hazy bursts of pink and white blossom, — all divinely clear. And oh, oh, oh! the queer dear mountain-climbing city, — itself a pilgrim, all robed in blue and white, and shadowed and hatted with unspeakable tiling,—and supporting itself with staffs of bamboo, as it zigzags, singing, up to the clouds! Oh for a photographer that knew his business! — for an artist with a soul to image what cannot be described at all in words! Even Loti could not do it. Neither Nara nor Kitzuki, nor anything in Kyoto, nor anything in Kamakura, can ever compare with the “ Saka.” The colors, the shadowings, the flutterings of drapery, the riddles of the shops, the look-down over the magical village to the grand blue silhouette of Sannki-Fuji! I saw on the tablets the name of “ B. H. Chamberlain, English,”—and I wished so much he were beside me, that I might say those things which moments inspire but which cannot be written or remembered.

Kaji’s grandmother, at the bottom of the steps, took off her zori, and began the ascent very lightly, with the child on her back. I protested, but Settsu said, “ No, that is mother’s way; she thinks it wrong to approach a holy place with footgear.” People stopped her to look at Kaji and ask questions. I was taken for an Ainoko by some, — Kaji seems to pass for a Japanese very well. In parts of Oki also I was said to be an Ainoko.

We made a present to the temple, following the example of B. H. Chamberlain, English; and the miko danced for us. They were two very pretty girls, — not painted up and powdered like the Nara virgins, but looking like the sisters of the daughters of the Dragon-King in the Urashima pictures. Kaji opened his eyes more widely, and laughed, and made one of the miko smile, even during her solemn dance. After the dance he became an object of attention. Kaji seemed to like the miko better than any other strangers of the fair sex; — for with this exception his friendships are especially masculine. I admired his taste in the case of the miko. Besides they were just at the loveable period between girlhood and womanhood, when children are very strongly sympathized with.

Our hotel was the Toraya. You know there are two figures of tigers there, said to have been made by Hidari Jiugoro, and caged in wire nets. (I suspect they are relics of the Buddhist days of Kompira.) And upstairs I found myself looking out upon the street through the legs of another tiger. There are more than one hundred rooms, and a very beautiful garden. What most impressed me was the use of a most beautiful sky-blue plaster for the walls of the back part of the buildings and corridors leading to the chozuba. — A lot of geisha came and sat down in the gallery to play with Kaji. I hope that will be Kaji’s last acquaintance with geisha, — although they behaved very prettily with him.

I passed over the wonderful bridge, of course; and down the avenue of stone lanterns; and we ascended the colossal toro, and saw the black skillets in which two go of tomoshiabura are burned every night. But we did not take Kaji upstairs. It would have been dangerous. I observed the curious wind-bells of bronze, hung at the corners of the eaves; the very broad tongue has almost the figure of an inverted fleurde-lys.

I returned by a much finer boat, — the Odagawa Maru, very comfortable, with a good table. There were many children; and Kaji won many successes. Meanwhile I met one of your old pupils, — a young naval surgeon named Oki, now stationed at Kure, with a prospect of three years study in Germany. A fine, long-limbed young fellow, with heavy eyebrows, and a love of innocent mischief. We talked a good deal together. I also met the new director of the Yamaguchi Higher Middle School — pleasant, cautious, and inquisitively official; there I saw only the surface. Oki seems to me a fine boy. He has just the necessary amount of conceit to help him through the surf of life; and exactly the disposition that will make friends for him among the students of Munich, where he hopes to go.

We were delayed about six hours by a perfectly black night — the hand could not be seen before the face. Kaji gave no trouble at all.

But there are so many risks for a child in travel, that I did not feel quite easy till we got home last night. I send a picture of Kaji. His last friendship on the railroad was with a grim-looking Government surveyor, whose hand he seized from behind, while the man was looking out of the window.

(Finis first chapter of the Adventures of Kaji.)

What, after all, is the charm of Kompira ’s city? Not certainly in any particular thing. It is the result of a great combination of very simple things under a divine sky. This grey day it would look common enough. Another day it would look like the ascent, through blue light and sungold, into the phantom city of the Gokuraku, and the gardens where souls, like Kaji’s, are born out of the lotus-flowers, and fed with ambrosia by miko having wings. Truly the whole place is a work of art, —wit h well-chosen Nature for its living pedestal, or canvas.

And that’s all about my travels.

Faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, May 25, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
. . . To-day X spent an hour in reading over part of the notes taken on my first arrival, and during the first six months of 1890. Result, I asked myself: “ How came you to go mad? — absolutely mad? ” It was the same kind of madness as the first love of a boy.

I find I described horrible places as gardens of paradise, and horrid people as angels and divinities. How happy I must have been without knowing it! There are all my illusions facing me, — on faded yellow paper. I feel my face tingle as I study some of them. Happily I had the judgment not to print many lines from them.

But — I ask myself — am I the only fool in the world ? Or was I a fool at all? Or is everybody, however wise, at first deluded more or less by unfamiliar conditions when these are agreeable, the idea always being the son of the wish?

Perhaps I was right in one way. For that moment Japan was really for me what I thought it. To the child, the world is blue and green; to the old man, grey — both are right.

So with all things. Relations alone exist. The writer’s danger is that of describing his own, as if they were common or permanent. Perhaps the man who comes to Japan full of hate for all things Oriental may get nearer to truth at once — though, of course, he will also make a kindred mistake.

KUMAMOTO,June 4, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN : —
. . . Every once in a while, some delightful, earnest, sweet-souled man — a Tempo — comes down here and lectures. He tells the boys of their relation to the country’s future. He reminds them of their ancestors. He speaks to them of loyalty and honour. He laments the decay of the ancient spirit, and the demoralizing influence of Western manners and Western religion and Western business methods. And as the boys are good, their hearts get full, and something brightens their eyes in spite of the fashion of impassiveness. But what are their thoughts after?

A striking example was afforded me the other day, by a conversation with the remarkable student I told you of before, — Yasukochi Asakichi.

I will try to reproduce it thus: —

“ Sir! What was your opinion of the old-fashioned Japanese when you came first to Japan. Please to be quite frank with me.”

“ You mean the old men like Akizuki-San? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Why I thought them divine, — Kami-Sama; and I think them more divine now that I have seen the new generation.”

” Akizuki is a type of the ideal old samurai. But as a foreigner you must have perceived faults.”

“ How faults? ”

“ From your Western standpoint.”

“ My Western standpoint is philosophical and ethical. A people’s perfection means their perfect fitness for the particular form of society to which they belong. Judging from such a standpoint the man of the Akizuki type was more perfect than any Western type I have ever met. Ethically, I could say the same.”

“ But in a Society of the Western type, could such men play a great part?”

“ By their unaided exertions? ”

“ Yes.”

“ No; they have no business capacity, and no faculty for certain combinations.”

“ That is true. And in what did their goodness seem to consist to you? ”

“ In honour, loyalty, courtesy, — in supreme self-control, — in unselfishness, — in consideration of the rights of others, — in readiness to sacrifice self.”

“ That also is true. But in Western life are these qualities sufficient to command success? ”

“ No.”

“ And the Oriental system of morals cultivated these; and the result of that cultivation was to suppress the individual for the sake of the whole? ”

“ Yes.”

“ On the other hand, the Western form of society develops the individual by encouraging selfishness — competition, struggle for gain, — and all that? ”

“ Yes.”

“ And Japan, in order to keep her place among nations, must do business and carry on industry and commerce in the Western manner? ”

“ Perhaps.”

“ I do not think there is a perhaps. There is only a must. We must have manufactures, commerce, banks, stockcompanies — we must do things in the Western way, since our future must be industrial and commercial. If we should try to do things in the old way, we should always remain poor and feeble. We should also get the worst in every commercial transaction.”

“ Yes.”

“ Well, how can we do any business, — or attempt any enterprise, — or establish any large system, — or carry on any competition — or do anything on a large scale, — if we live by the old morality? ”

“ Why? ”

“ Because if we can do something advantageous to ourselves or our interests only by hurting some one else, we cannot do that according to the old morality.”

“Yes.”

“ But to do business in a Western way we must not be checked by any such scruples; the man who hesitates to obtain an advantage simply because he knows some one else will be injured by it, will fail.”

“Not always.”

“ It must be the general rule when there are no checks upon competition. The cleverest and strongest succeed; the weak and foolish fail; it is the natural law — the struggle for life. Is Western competition based upon love of one’s fellow man? ”

“ No.”

“ Sir, the truth is that, no matter how good the old morality was, we cannot follow any such moral law and preserve our national independence and achieve any progress. We must try to substitute law for morality.”

“ It is a bad substitute.”

“ It is not a bad substitute in England. Besides at last, men, through the influence of law, will learn to be moral by reason, not by emotion. We must forsake our Past (?)

And I could say nothing.

Heine said (I don’t remember where) something about watching people as so many walking numerals. Peripatetic 1 giving an arm to peripatetic 2; 3 and 4 going to church together. To the Japanese official world, all of us foreigners are mere animated numerals. The salary of No. 7 ought to be reduced because it is larger than that of No. 8. There is no other reason.

Most gratefully,

LAFCADIO.

[No date.]

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN; —
. . . Now about your argument. Indeed, as you say, there is a vast spiritual side to Western life, and noble effort must ever rest upon a spiritual basis,—just as in hard science the most material possible fact rests on a metaphysical basis. This has been beautifully proved by Huxley. For when we even touch the question of matter itself scientifically, the thing vanishes further than Berkeley’s examination ever went; and leaves us in the presence of nothing but ghostliness.

Unfortunately, however, that is what must be termed a material side to life, — the real materialism. Our civilization, with all its aspirations, is industrial and commercial, — and there is no morality in that competition worth priding ourselves upon. It is n’t Yankeedom more than it is Anglodom. See, for a terrible illustration of the facts in the case, Herbert Spencer’s essay “The Morals of Trade.” Business men know this. The Eclectics you sent me contained several awful articles on the same subject, written by Englishmen. The fact seems to me that my young student is altogether right. Without having studied philosophy, he perceives that emotional morality must yield to legal morality; and I am trying to make him consider cosmic law the law to study, and he understands. I have English business friends; men who control vast movements of money. They do not hesitate to speak frankly about the cruelties and the bitterness of commercial competition.

Our whole civilization is based upon immorality — if we are to accept either the Buddhist or the Christian system of ethics. There is a comparative morality, of course; but he who follows the old code must fail. What you and I love — what we admire —what we aspire after — does not belong to industrialism; yet only by industrialism can any of us — even a Spencer or Huxley or Tennyson — exist. We can do what is beautiful or right — only by the aid of industrialism — unless, like Thoreau, we prefer to live in the woods. A larger morality will come — but only when competition ends. As for the condition of woman in Western lands, I think you refer only to the upper classes. The condition of woman in certain classes is horrible beyond Japanese imagining.
Ever sincerely,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO. Jane 27th, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
Your letter came late last night, and made me very glad. It is really nice to be able to think, or at least to feel, as if one’s friends were especially cared for by the Gods. I had no idea when I first wrote you on the subject how much real danger there was so near you.

There is no news here to send you, even about that tiresome subject — myself. The heat is great, but heat makes me feel young, although I am this blessed or accursed day exactly forty-four years old (27th June), and if I could be where it is always hot I think I should live to dry up and blow away. Still I can sympathize with your discomfort, — to enjoy great heat we should be able to dress or undress as we please, have freedom from dust, and the luxury of moving water — whether river, lake, or sea. I fear Tokyo has not these.

Liquidly beautiful the sky-fire is, and everything looks sharp as the edge of a sword, and the white clouds seem souls of Bosatsu about to melt into Nirvana. There is pleasure always in this nature — however wearisome the hard work of living (or working) with people who have no souls. For the Japanese officials have none. Imagine people having no sentiment of light — of blue — of infinity! And they cannot feel possibly the beauty of their own day as you or I do. Think of the comparison of Fuji to a white half-open inverted fan hanging in the sky. Of course it is pretty; it is even startlingly real; — but what sentiment is there in it? What feeling do mountains give these people? Surely nothing like the thought of Job, — “He maketh Peace in His High Places.” What feeling does light give them? — the light which makes us wish to pray — to thank somebody for? Nothing like the utterance of John, — “Verily this is the message we give unto you, — that God is light!” What even in their thought of Nature — beautifully as they mock her? Has any among them ever so much as thought the thought of the Bhagavad-Gita, — “ I am the breath of winds, the light of waters — MOST ANCIENT AND MOST EXCELLENT OF POETS"?

VOL. 105NO. 2

Never a one! They have lost the child-hearts that the Gods gave them, which were beautiful; and in place of them have something resembling the legendary apples of Sodom — full of bitterness and dust only.

Oh dear! oh dear! I used to think I had no soul; but since coming here I think I have, — that if I try very hard, I could discover it. Converted from various nihilisms I have become. The Western world verily seems to me now not only a Titan world, but a world charged with spirit, like a dynamo with lightning.

Of course there are bottled devils in multitude, as in the Arabian tales of Soliman; but what a magical world it is! — and how much does absolute exile from it mean!

I wonder how I shall feel in another few years. Would that I could go to those zones in which Nature remains primeval, — where light is divine, and where people walk forever with eyes fixed upon the ground, — looking for snakes. Then I should say to the cobra,— “Thou art my sister and my brother. Thou hast a soul. So have I. But I have been among men not having souls.”
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, July 21, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
. . . How touching Tolstoi is! Still, the fault of the beautiful religion of the man is simply that it is unsuited to the real order of things. Resentment, as Spencer has not hesitated to point out, is not only essential to self-preservation, but is often a moral duty. Altruistic characters may be regulated by Buddhist or Christian codes of action,

— but what about anti-altruistic characters — the Ape-souls and tiger-souls whose pleasure is in malice or destruction? The number is few; — but which of us has not met some, and recognized their capacity for evil? I believe the mass of humanity is good. I think every man must so think who has suffered much, and reached middle life. Nevertheless the sum of this goodness is not so preponderant that we can practically adapt either Tolstoiism or Buddhism to our Western civilization. Indeed no general course of action will suit. The dynamics of ethics must be varied according to class and time. The great fault of all religious systems is their application of a single code to many widely different conditions. For all that, Tolstoi is certainly a light of the world, — a practical Christ in his own life. Curious that in Russia and England, in the same generation, two poets, Ruskin and Tolstoi, should have attempted to follow in practice the teaching: “Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor.” The most religious men of the nineteenth century are the infidels — the “atheists and blasphemers.”

I wish you could get Minnie Hauk to sing you a Habanera, or the Seguidilla (seducing word!) from Carmen. I heard her sing it, and the little eddies it made in my soul still thrill. — I cannot tell how glad I was to find that Mason had not read Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen. The opera, lovely as it is, does not give the awful poignancy of the tale — simple and clear beyond description. I am going to send it up to you, with a bundle of other things, as soon as I get back.

This reminds me of a dream I had a few months ago. I was sleeping, after reading Carmen for the fifth time, I think — quite a tropical afternoon it was. I entered a patio, — between lemon-colored walls, — there was a crowd and music. I saw no face in the crowd — only felt people were there; — all my eyes and soul were for a gipsy dancing in the midst; — poising, hovering, balancing, tantalizing with eyes and gestures, — and every click of the castanets went into my blood. I woke up and found the clicking of the castanets was only the ticking of the little clock, — strangely exaggerated in the heated silence of the afternoon.

The enormous laughter of the crows every morning amuses me very much. I had not heard anything like it since leaving Izumo. The only striking bit of weirdness in “ Shuntoku Maru ” is that about indicating the time of the apparition of the boy’s dead mother as “ the hour when the crows first fly crying abroad, before the breaking of the day.”

Faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, September 11, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
. . . Well, I am sorry you feel vexed about the treaty. There is one thing in it I don’t like for my own sake — the question of landholding. It affects the marriage question. I see no way out of the passage, except Japanese citizenship or great riches.

Excuse my hot words on the other side of the treaty question. I could not view from your standpoint, and cannot now, — simply because I can’t think England has any real rights here at all. I see her only as a strong robber and an oppressor of weaker races. If I could get that point of view out of my head, I could judge otherwise. But — morally — what right has England to touch Japanese ground at all? And then, the curse of missionaries, the ruin of everything beautiful, the introduction of selfishness, the demoralization of a once happy people — the destruction of another Greece by another Rome — all this is very ugly and very sad. Let us admire Paulus Æmilius; but one street of Corinth or one temple at Olympus was artistically worth a great many Paulus(es). (This is the plural you approve.)

But Lord! Lord! what is morality? Nature’s law — the cosmic law, is struggle, cruelty, pain — everything religion declares essentially immoral. The bird devours the fly, the cat the bird. Everything has been shaped, evolved, developed, by atrocious immorality. Our lives are sustained only by murder. Passions are given, which, if satisfied, would stifle the earth with population, were there not other passions of cruelty and avarice to counteract them. Perhaps it is the higher morality that the strong races should rob the weak,— deprive them of liberties and rights, — compel them to adopt beastly useless conventions, — insult their simple faith, — force upon them not the higher pleasures, but the deeper pains, of an infinitely more complicated and more unhappy civilization.

There certainly is no answer to this. It is contrary to all our inborn feeling of right. But what is that feeling? Only the necessary accompaniment of a social state. Does it correspond to any supreme law of the universe? — or is it merely relative? We know it is relative; we don’t know anything about the ultimate laws. The God of the Universe may be a Devil, — only mocking us with contradictions, — forcing us through immeasurable pain to supreme efforts, which are to end in nothing but the laughter of skulls in a world’s dust. Who knows? —We are only what we can’t help being.

From remote time all my ancestors were in the army. Yet to kill the fly that buzzes round me as I write this letter seems to me wrong. To give pain knowingly, even to one whom I dislike, gives more pain to myself. Psychology tells me the why — the origin of the feeling. But not by any such feeling is the world ruled — or will so be ruled for incalculable time. Such dispositions are counted worthless and weak, and are unfitted for the accomplishment of large things. Yet all religions teach the cultivation of the very qualities that ruin us. Clever men always follow the forms and laugh at the spirit. Out of all this enormous and unspeakably cruel contradiction, what is to come? A golden age, some say. But what good will that do us? — and what good will it do any one — since it must pass according to inevitable laws? — I understand the laws, their results. But what is their meaning? What is right? What is wrong? Why should there be laws at all?

Is it selfish to tell you my feelings? It would be, perhaps, if you were feeling gloriously well, — but as you also have some trouble, — perhaps more suffering from illness than you ever speak of, — you will have the grim comfort of knowing that one not sick at all thinks of your existence as the seventh heaven — as the life of Haroun A1 Raschid — as the luxury of the most fortunate of the fortunate khalifs of Bagdad.
Faithfully, with best wishes,
LAFCADIO HEARN.

KUMAMOTO, November 3, 1894.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN: —
I got your last delightful letter in its Japanese envelope. You thought it was a poor letter; but what you generally think poor I find unusual interest in. There is a deal of concentrated penetrative observation in those hastily written notes of yours which sinks into my mind, and is apt to reappear again, after many days, in some essay of mine — having by that time become so much a part of my own thought that I find it difficult to establish the boundary-line between meum and tuum. Of course one must have lived a long time in the country to feel your letters in this way.

Aldrich is at the Grand Hotel, or was, until time of this writing. I dropped him a note, expressing the hope that he would meet you and Mason. He can talk Italy to you.

I am glad you agree about the Italian and French character — the depth, subtlety, and amazing latent power of the former; the Greek cast of the latter. Yes, I don’t think we should disagree much — except as to my firm conviction of the artistic and moral value of sensuality. You know in this nineteenth century we are beginning to make war upon even intellectual sensuality, — the pleasure in emotional music, — the pleasure in physical grace as a study, — the pleasure in colored language and musical periods. I doubt if this is right. The puritanism of intellect is cultivated to the gain of certain degrees of power, but also the hardening of character,— ultimately tending to absolute selfishness and fixity of mental habit. Too deeply fixed in the cause of life are the pleasures of sense, to be weeded out without injury to the lifecentres themselves, and to all the emotions springing from them. We cannot attack the physical without attacking the moral; for evolutionally all the higher intellectual faculties have their origin in the development of the physical. . . .

The finale of my long correspondence with you on Japanese character is frankly this (I know it is unjust; I know it is small. But I suppose it is natural, — and I am not superior to nature, — besides I see no reason why I should not be in all things frank with you): —

I hate and detest the Japanese.

I refused even to attend a banquet given by a European merchant the other day because there were Japanese present. I wish to make no more Japanese acquaintances. I shall never again be interested in any Japanese of the educated generation. I shall never even receive any of my former pupils. I simply abominate the Japanese.

There’s a nice confession for the author of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan to make. But remember — the book was finished a long time ago; and the illusion had not worn off. I should not like now to trust myself to say what I think of the Japanese in their relation to us. I fear the missionaries are right who declare them without honor, without gratitude, and without brains.

D—n the Japanese!

Excepting, of course, the women of Japan who are — well, who are not Japanese. They remain angels. Sufficient for this day is the evil thereof.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

(The End.)